36]] is even the doxology of the fourth book of Psalms, taken to be a component part of the psalm. These two latter grounds would be decisive, if the facts on which they rest were well authenticated. If. 1Ch 16:36 really contained only the doxology of the fourth book of Psalms-which, like the doxologies of the first, second, and third books (Ps. 41:14; Psa 72:18-19, and 89:53), was merely formally connected with the psalm, without being a component part of it-there could be no doubt that the author of the Chronicle had taken the conclusion of his hymn from our collection of psalms, as these doxologies only date from the originators of our collection. But this is not the state of the case. Psa 106:48 does, it is true, occupy in our Psalter the place of the doxology to the fourth book, but belonged, as Bertheau also acknowledges, originally to the psalm itself. For not only is it different in form from the doxologies of the first three books, not having the double ואמן אמן with which these books close, but it concludes with the simple הללוּ־יהּ אמן. If the ואמן אמן connected by ו is, in the Old Testament language, exclusively confined to these doxologies, which thus approach the language of the liturgical Beracha of the second temple, as Del. Ps. p. 15 rightly remarks, while in Num 5:22 and Neh 8:6 only אמן אמן without copulative w occurs, it is just this peculiarity of the liturgical Beracha which is wanting, both in the concluding verse of the 106th Psalm and in 1Ch 16:36 of our festal hymn. Moreover, the remainder of the verse in question - the last clause of it, “And let all the people say Amen, Halleluiah,” - does not suit the hypothesis that the verse is the doxology appended to the conclusion of the fourth book by the collector of the Psalms, since, as Hengstenberg in his commentary on the psalm rightly remarks, “it is inconceivable that the people should join in that which, as mere closing doxology of a book, would have no religious character;” and “the praise in the conclusion of the psalm beautifully coincides with its commencement, and the Halleluiah of the end is shown to be an original part of the psalm by its correspondence with the beginning.”[1]
The last verse of our hymn does not therefore
- ↑ Bertheau also rightly says: “If in Ps 72 (as also in Ps 89 and 91) the author of the doxology himself says Amen, while in Psa 106:48 the saying of the Amen is committed to the people, this difference can only arise from the face that Ps 106 originally concluded with the exhortation to say Amen.” Hitzig speaks with still more decision, die Pss. (1865), ii. S. x.: “If (in Ps 106) Psa 106:47 is the conclusion, a proper ending is wanting; while Psa 106:48, on the contrary, places the psalm on a level with Ps 103-105; 107. Who can believe that the author himself, for the purpose of ending the fourth book with Psa 106:48, caused the psalm to extend to the Psa 106:48? In the Chronicle, the people whom the verse mentions are present from 1 Chron 15:3-16:2, while in the psalm no one can see how they should come in there. Whether the verse belong to the psalm or not, the turning to all the people, and the causing the people to say Amen, Amen, instead of the writer, has no parallel in the Psalms, and is explicable only on the supposition that it comes from the Chronicle. Afterwards a Diaskeuast might be satisfied to take the verse as the boundary-stone of a book.”
